Richard Bernstein

Finished Richard Bernstein’s Fragile Glory: A Portrait of France and the French a few days ago. I can’t quite remember how I came upon this book, but I am pretty sure it was by accident. Perhaps I found it in the basement of my old building in Cleveland Park, where residents had set up an informal book exchange. I definitely did not set out to get it, and certainly did not pay for it.

Given that pedigree, or lack thereof, it actually ended up being a very decent read. Bernstein, a longtime New York Times correspondent in Paris, attempts nothing less than the examination of the French national character, and, assuming such an examination is possible at all, comes close to succeeding. Anyone writing about culture not his own is liable to fall into stereotypes and facile judgments, and Bernstein does so rather quickly: “The French are not a people particularly known for the modesty of their self-conception.” (p. 4). To his credit, however, it gets better from there, and where it does not, at least Bernstein backs his claims up with convincing arguments.

The book is divided into three parts, all somewhat oblique to one another. The first deals with the idea and the reality (the two are frequently at odds) of the French countryside. La France profonde, it is apparently called, “the deep France.” This section is probably the most valuable purely in terms of what one learns about everyday life in rural France. It is a side of French culture that foreigners, and in many cases the French themselves, according to Bernstein at least, know very little about and rarely, if ever, stop to contemplate. To the extent that they do, their idea of it comes from some starry-eyed travel piece in a wine magazine, or something equally disconnected from reality. Bernstein, who traveled extensively in the countryside, sets the record straight, painting a relatively dark picture of a people far more conservative and less prosperous than what most of us think when we hear the word “France.”

The second part deals with the aspects of the French culture that we tend to have in mind when we think of the French without really thinking – food, style, driving habits, alleged reflexive anti-Americanism. Most of it is highly entertaining, much of it insightful, and Bernstein manages to minimize judgment. More serious, and sometimes disturbing, aspects of the culture make their appearance here, to be examined more fully in the last section – xenophobia, anti-Semitism – as well as less obvious but still significant preoccupations of the French – the role of traditional aristocracy in modern French society, for example.

The last section deals with the history, principles, and functioning of the French state – not just the government proper, though that gets a lot of attention – but the phenomenon of the pervasive, technocratic, hyper-influential state, by turns a stern schoolmaster and a loving parent to its citizens, often despised by the French who depend on it for much of their livelihood. I found this fascinating because even as a minor Francophile, I was only vaguely aware of the details. The general outline is familiar, of course, especially with Sarkozy and his attempts at reform frequently in the news these days, but I didn’t really appreciate just how profoundly different civic thinking in France is from its American counterpart. It is here that Bernstein offers the most direct and damning moral critique of French society. He covers the modern political Far Right, of course, as well as the history of Vichy and (in passing) of the Algerian war for independence, but the real problem that he explains and illustrates so well is the French government’s ongoing willingness to cover up unsavory, sometimes exceedingly so, political affairs in the name of preserving the honor of the French state and – even more worrisome – the public willingness to go along.

If an overall conclusion emerges from the book, it is two-fold. One is that the French, despite all their cries of “Vive la difference,” as individuals and as a society are far more friendly, accepting of strangers and less mysterious than we tend to give them credit for. The other is that the defining feature of French society, and a major factor in how it expresses itself, is the idea is that France is slowly but steadily losing its former grandeur on the world stage, and that many of its citizens, whether consciously or not, try to slow down that decline with their behaviors and attitudes, even though they realize that the decline is ultimately irreversible.

My biggest criticism of the book is not at all Bernstein’s fault. Published in 1990, it is quite simply outdated. Some themes are timeless, of course. Most are, in fact, and that’s what keeps the book largely relevant. Others, however, are very much a sign of Bernstein’s time. President Mitterand, now largely forgotten, figures very prominently, and the discussion of the EU is all but non-existent. His illustration of a sordid affair is the government coverup of the sinking of a Greenpeace ship off the coast of New Zealand in 1985. Who remembers that now? On balance, however, Bernstein’s book has enough historical vision and enough thought-provoking observations to survive, at least if you can find a free copy in a basement somewhere.